Osman Samiuddin provides his final diary entry from the World Twenty20 in India.
3rd April, Kolkata
Post-match presentations, by nature, are dull. Tick off all the names on the “thank you” list that need to be ticked off. Praise the individual contributions while skilfully weaving in the entire team. If you lose, downplay the individual failures at the altar of the team’s failings.
Job done, thank you. They are usually as dull for the reporter to write out as they are for the player or captain to undertake.
On Sunday night, however, the West Indies made it their business to single-handedly give post-match presentations an entirely new identity.
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Marlon Samuels, player of the final, was going through the motions until the very end, when he decided to have an almighty pop at Shane Warne (at the press conference Samuels, feet up on the table, would say of Warne: “I don’t know why he hates me … maybe it’s because my face is real and his is not”.)
Darren Sammy came on and did likewise and suddenly, having a pop at his own cricket board. Suddenly, we had headlines to accompany the main headlines.
Now people may cringe at these reactions and think it was not quite the right response in victory. But it was an emotional moment, only to be properly assessed once the dust has settled on the evening’s events.
That emotion had broken through the press box windows and infected most of the journalists inside. The decorum of press boxes around the world varies depending on where you are.
Media men of some countries can get emotional when they are covering their side, but I do not think I can remember the kind of emotions in a press box that we witnessed (and were, maybe, even part of) on Sunday evening.
West Indies are a lot of people’s second-favourite side and there were hardly any Caribbean journalists inside, but the frantic, magnificent nature of the finish propelled everything to a different level entirely. A fitting, celebratory way to end the tournament.
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